Patriots star Brady's missing Super Bowl jersey found in Mexico

Reuters|

Mar 21, 2017, 03.10 AM IST

By Scott Malone

BOSTON (Reuters) - The New England Patriots jersey that vanished after quarterback Tom Brady wore it in the team's fifth Super Bowl victory last month has been found in Mexico, officials said on Monday.

The jersey and a second one Brady wore in a championship victory two years earlier were taken by a former Mexican media executive who had been credentialed to cover the February game in Houston, according to the National Football League and law enforcement officials.

A Mexican newspaper group said on Monday a former staffer was involved in the theft, following an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Houston Police Department and league security.

"You don't come to Texas and embarrass us here on our own turf," Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo told reporters on Monday. He added the case, while not a major crime, had been investigated because "the only blemish that we had from the Super Bowl was these jerseys that were stolen from the locker room."

Mexico's La Prensa newspaper said in a statement it had been informed that its former director Martin Ortega had been involved in the theft.

"If it turns out to be true, (La Prensa) strongly rejects the conduct of Martin Ortega ... who took advantage of the position he had to use the La Prensa newspaper to get accreditation and gain access to the field," it said in a statement. Ortega resigned last Tuesday, citing personal reasons.

Ortega could not be reached for comment on Monday.

The jersey could have been sold to a collector for "great monetary gain," Acevedo said.

Brady told reporters the morning after the Patriots' 34-28 overtime win over the Atlanta Falcons that he had packed up the jersey bearing his No. 12 after the game, but it had disappeared.

"It's unfortunate, because that's a nice piece of memorabilia," he told reporters at the time. "Those are pretty special ones to keep. What can you do? I'll take the ring and that's good enough for me."

While the 39-year-old quarterback still has his Super Bowl rings, the team's owner, Robert Kraft, is lacking one of the diamond-encrusted mementoes.

Russian President Vladimir Putin walked away with Kraft's ring commemorating the team's 2005 Super Bowl win over the Philadelphia Eagles when the two met later that year. Kraft has said he intended only to show Putin the ring but the leader kept it.

(Additional reporting by Enrique Andres Pretel in Mexico City and Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas; Editing by Grant McCool and Peter Cooney)